RETURN OF THE FIBER BY KIERAN CLARK
This past year was one of the best the submarine fiber industry has enjoyed since the industry crash in the early 2000s – perhaps coming second only to 2009 from a system activity standpoint. Double digit numbers of systems hit the water and began feeding data to hungry consumers while paradigm shifts across the board continued to breathe life into what had been a stagnant market.
For only the second time since 2001, the 100 thousand-kilometer installation mark was hit. Additionally, 2017 saw a whopping $3.5 billion USD which is the most dollar amount invested since 2001. There is surely a lot from this past year to be proud of and excited by – not the least of which is the prospect that this level of activity might continue for the foreseeable future.
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Welcome to SubTel Forum’s annual Global Outlook issue. This month, we’ll take a brief look at how the industry performed around the world last year, and see what 2018 might bring. The data used in this article is obtained from the public domain and is tracked by the ever evolving STF Analytics Submarine Cable Database, where products like the Submarine Cable Almanac, Submarine Cable Map and Submarine Telecoms Industry Report find their roots.
CABLE SYSTEMS BY THE NUMBERS
Prior to 2017, the world experienced a steady decline in new system development due to economic uncertainty and the prevalence of system upgrades. With a greater demand in new markets and route
diversity, system implementation experienced a boom in 2017. In all, 16 new systems were added to the global network in 2017 — nearly triple that of 2016.
Our last Global Outlook edition reported 30 systems planned to be ready for service in 2017 and 13 systems for 2018. One year later, these numbers look very different. Only 16 systems went live in 2017, 2018 saw an increase to 22 planned systems and 2019 currently has 15 systems planned (Figure 1). A few systems planned for 2017 simply slipped their RFS date to 2018 or 2019, while several other systems simply died outright. While 2018 has seen a swell of planned systems since this time last year, a few of these are carryovers from 2017 that were not able to finish their commissioning and acceptance phase